14 Jun 2014

Petite Brown Sugar, Honey & Cinnamon Palmiers

One day, I was browsing the internet looking for a recipe to use up some puff pastry we had in the fridge and stumbled upon this recipe called petite palmiers from thekitchn.com without knowing what the heck is a palmier. But then when I saw the picture, a lightbulb just switched on in my head and I recognised them right away. You might know it as "Genji pies", the well beloved brand of palmier cookies.
Who would have thought that they are so easy to make at home?

Palmier is the French word for palm tree (still struggling to see the resemblance between the cookies and an actual palm tree) and these are also known as elephant ear cookies made with puff pastry, covered with sugar and then baked to flaky buttery goodness. The appearance of these homemade palmiers are (obviously) different from their store bought counterpart. While the storebought ones are more neat and has an identical-same-sized heart shape, the homemade version took a more rustic, oddly shaped double swirled shape which I do not mind at all. I actually loved the "awkwardly-crooked" shaped cookies. For me, they look more like snails rather than a palm tree nor an elephant ear.

2. Lay the puff pastry on a flat surface and sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon, make sure to distribute them equally.

3. Gently roll a rolling pin onto the pastry to securely stick the sugar and cinnamon.

4. Carefully roll in two sides of the pastry until they meet in the middle. To ensure I have an equally sized rolls on each side, I do it alternately, one on the left and then one on the right, and so on.

5. Wrap the roll with a cling wrap and refrigerate for 15-20 minutes

6. Heat the oven to 200C and line a baking sheet with baking paper

7. Take out the roll and cut it into approximately 1 1/2 cm width pieces. Lay them flat a few inches away from each other (they spread a little) on the baking sheet and press them gently with the flat bottom of a glass. Brush them with melted butter. Sprinkle with some brown sugar and cinnamon .

8. Pop them in the oven for 8 minutes.

9. Meanwhile, we will make the honey glaze. Place the honey and water into a small microwave safe bowl and blast it for 15 seconds in the microwave. After 8 minutes in the oven, take out the baking sheet and brush the palmiers with the honey glaze and then put it back in the oven for 7 minutes.

10. After another 7 minutes and the palmiers are golden brown, take it out on the oven, leave them on the baking sheet for 5 minutes and then transfer them onto a cooling rack to cool completely.

I was such a rebel and didn't press them down on my second trial, thinking that I will get a prettier shape but but some of the roll spreads out too much and they didn't come out uniformly enough. So, make sure to press them down!

Oh, and the reason why I took them out halfway just to brush them with the glaze instead of just brushing them before they all go into the oven is to prevent the glaze from burning too soon.

As usual, the recipe is only a rough guideline on how to make them. Use less or more sugar / cinnamon according to you liking, or maybe make a totally different one? How about a chocolatey nutella palmiers?